Here’s a rock-solid argument against racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, or any other form of prejudice against an out-group:
People are wrong to believe that there are important differences between us and them. We should treat the out-group the same as we treat the in-group, because the out-group and the in-group are, on average, the same.
Thus, the cleanest argument against race-based employment discrimination is, “Workers of all races are equally productive.” The cleanest argument against single-sex clubs is, “Men and women have the same personalities and interests.” The cleanest argument against national origins immigration quotas is, “People from all countries make equally good citizens.” The cleanest argument for legal gay marriage is, “Marriage is just as worthwhile for gays as it is for straights.” And so on.
This does not imply, of course, that group differences automatically justify unequal treatment. But group differences plainly complicate matters. As group differences grow, the case for equal treatment becomes more open to doubt. Almost no one complains when 90-year-olds have to renew their driver’s licenses more frequently than 40-year-olds, because the average gap in driving ability between these two age groups is vast.
So suppose you want to discourage prejudice. Anti-discrimination activists usually focus on people’s perceptions about group differences. And if people overestimate group differences, fixing perceptions is indeed the obvious path.
There is, however, another approach. Instead of trying to change what people think about group differences, you could try to shrink those differences. Though extreme bigots may cling to their negative views, the straightforward way to change what people think is to change what they see.
Now here’s what’s weird: People who detest prejudice often do the opposite. Instead of trying to make differences go away, they accentuate them. How? By building group identity. Instead of saying, “We’re the same as you, so stop treating us badly,” activists usually prefer to say, “We’re proud of our distinctive culture and attitudes, so stop treating us badly.”
Think about the dynamics. When the activists’ people hear this message, what’s their natural reaction? To make their identity even more pronounced. After all, it’s a great source of pride, so let’s double down. When outsiders hear this message, similarly, their natural reaction is not to stop discriminating, but to dwell on this declaration of difference. If you’re so proud to be different from us, they silently ask, why shouldn’t we treat you differently? From here, a vicious spiral of pride and prejudice ensues.
Now, you could object, “If you’d treated us well all along, we wouldn’t have sought solace in our group identity.” But whoever you blame, the fact remains: Identity causes prejudice. This doesn’t mean it’s the sole cause of prejudice. But is is one important cause. And you can do something about it.
The lesson: If you want prejudice to go away, don’t tell people to be proud of their identities. Instead, ask them to focus on our common humanity – the sense that our differences are “only skin-deep.” If you must have a sense of identity, make it not proud but casual. Despite what you’ve heard, appeasement usually works. When I describe myself as “an openly nerdy man,” both nerds and non-nerds laugh. No one worries about wounding my pride as nerd. And that’s just the way I like it.
READER COMMENTS
Seth Green
Jul 2 2018 at 5:24pm
So a lot of ‘contact hypothesis’ studies do exactly what you propose — they either explicitly focus on ‘our differences are skin deep’
interventions, or they put people together in ways that really do minimize those differences. Here are a few:
Scacco and Warren (https://www.nyu.edu/projects/scacco/files/Scacco_Warren_UYVT.pdf) put Muslims and Christians in Nigeria into computer training classes together — which, if it doesn’t quite address cultural differences, does instead emphasize shared goals, cooperation, cooperative learning, etc.
Finseraas & Kotsadaam: “Does personal contact with ethnic minorities affect anti‐immigrant sentiments? Evidence from a field experiment”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-6765.12199 studies the effects of having minority and ethnically white Norwegians live together during military training, which affects attitudes towards immigrants’ work ethics but not support for ending ‘welfare dualism’ (immigrants get lower welfare rights in Norway, I take it). So then there’s an interesting angle there too that contact changes personal/racial attitudes but not necessarily political attitudes.
Ilya Novak
Jul 2 2018 at 5:39pm
Bryan says
Ilya says
In fact, Bryan’s statement applies to any conceivable categorical schema of humans. It applies even to Bryan’s example of the elderly person trying to get a driver’s license.
John Alcorn
Jul 2 2018 at 6:34pm
Bryan Caplan writes:
A new study by Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano, and Stefanie Stantcheva, “Immigration and Redistribution” (NBER Working Paper No. 24733, June 2018), finds that fixing perceptions isn’t a robust fix:
The paper is here (gated version).
A very full set of ungated slides are here.
Conscience of a Citizen
Jul 12 2018 at 6:28pm
Based on the ungated slides, that Alesina, Miano, and Stantcheva paper is kind of bogus with respect to the United States (I’m not sure about the other countries it treats).
First off, the data presented shows that for many of their measures, the supposed gap between Americans’ perceptions and reality is small. Small enough that instead of characterizing respondents as ignorant, it would be more appropriate to say they are surprisingly well informed for laymen surprised by abstruse statistical questions.
Second, the “unemployment” perception question uses a very technical definition of unemployment to make immigrants look more productive and survey respondents look more foolish. The survey counts immigrants as unemployed only if they are actively seeking work and unable to find it, which leaves out the large fraction of immigrants who don’t bother to seek work. According to the US Census, only about 60% (3/5) of working-age immigrants work. So Americans correctly perceive that many immigrants are “unemployed” in the general sense (and that immigration-boosters are deliberately lying when they claim that “immigrants all come to work”).
Third, the survey draws tendentious distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants and between immigrants and their offspring to make survey respondents look ill-informed. Most Americans have no way to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants when they encounter them or hear of them impinging on their friends’ and neighbors’ lives. Most Americans reasonably regard everyone in immigrant-headed households as “immigrants” even if some are technically citizen children– that is reasonable since social spending in America is directed mainly to households, not individuals. Many of the supposed perception-reality gaps in America would likely be smaller if more reasonable definitions were utilized.
Mark Z
Jul 3 2018 at 4:10am
The counterargument might be that people’s prejudices themselves create differences. If police treat black people more harshly because they believe they are more likely to be criminals, they will induce more criminality among black people. One might say there is a feedback loop involving prejudice and disparities, and the only way out of the loop is to eliminate the prejudice, as it is far easier (they might argue) to change a person’s perception of reality than it is to change reality.
Realistically, I don’t think the feedback loop is that strong though. I doubt prejudicial attitudes are the dominant causative factor in disparities between groups most of the time. But how one wants to deal with the disparities really depends on how strong one think causality runs in one direction versus the other (from prejudice to disparity, or disparity to prejudice).
Weir
Jul 3 2018 at 8:46am
There’s a second sense in which identity causes prejudice, and is designed to. Think of the line used by President Obama and Captain Kirk (in Star Trek Into Darkness), “That’s not who we are.” They build their speeches up to that big, climactic line. The idea is that you’re physically incapable of carrying it out, whatever it is. You couldn’t stomach it. It’s so repugnant to who you are, your constitution forbids you.
What Kirk and Obama are arguing is that your identity is such that you’re so predisposed and prejudiced against it, it’s not an option. You don’t even have to consider it or entertain the possibility because your identity is incompatible with making that choice. Your mind was made up already, and ought to be, because of who you are. It’s not in your nature, not in your constitution, not in your makeup, not in your being. And it works for everything, so that prejudice itself is “not who we are.”
Thaomas
Jul 3 2018 at 2:39pm
This is good advice for everyone, but it’s most helpful if practiced by the majority group.
Daniel Greene
Jul 3 2018 at 5:35pm
I think that this post misrepresents the views of the average anti-discrimination activist. The standard view is more like this:
The outgroup is getting mistreated by the dominant group.
This mistreatment is the primary cause of observable differences between the outgroup and the dominant group in socio-economic status.
To eliminate these differences, the outgroup needs to coordinate and make the mistreatment stop.
Emphasizing group identity is a necessary part of coordinating any group, including the outgroup.
I agree that attachment to an identity can cause prejudice. The tricky thing is that a strong group identity might also sometimes be necessary for mistreated groups to coordinate and make positive change.
Thomas Sewell
Jul 3 2018 at 6:07pm
Do you have some examples of when emphasizing a separate group identity was successful in reducing unfounded prejudices and leveling socio-economic status?
What has success looked like for people using this process?
Virtually all the “really emphasize group identity” examples I can think of have resulted in more conflict, not less, and worse results, not better, so curious about examples of the opposite effect.
Hazel Meade
Jul 12 2018 at 1:05pm
I don’t think it’s about coordinating to push for change.
I think that the group identity is sort of a response to the mistreatment, in which the outgroup learns that they must develop a positive group identity in order to help one-another survive mistreatment by the dominant group, both economically and psychologically. For example, black identity is largely about countering negative stereotypes that blacks learn from the dominant white society. Black people need a positive conception of blackness to overcome the negative image that the larger white society forces on them. lack identity is also largely about black people helping each other out of solidarity. if anything organizing to demand equal treatment is kind of secondary. It’s an identity formed by resignation that equal treatment is not going to happen, so they must d what they can to help themselves.
Comments are closed.